Skip to content

Instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

@practicingruby
Last active August 29, 2015 14:13
Show Gist options
  • Save practicingruby/d322de2b1a4a2aa02fba to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Save practicingruby/d322de2b1a4a2aa02fba to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.

I think you might benefit from a detailed study plan when you're a little further along with your studies. For now, I'd recommend following your interests, and taking a project-based approach towards learning.

Start with an idea of something you might want to build, and then make a list of all the stuff you'd need to learn to build it. Then, strip down the idea to make it a little more simple, and redo the list. Keep doing that until you have a list that's small enough to manage

Fair warning: full-scale applications tend to look like "first invent the whole world, then build your app", so you may need to come up with really simple ideas to start on. That's OK! You may also not know what you need to know until you try building things, that's OK too.

Once you have a few ideas, start reading and watching videos related to the technical tools and concepts you need. But only go just as deep into those resources as you need in order to build one small piece of a real project... you can always come back later if you need to. Don't be afraid to ask me or anyone online for help when you get stuck... it's often as easy as sharing a link for whoever is answering your question.

Another thing you need to do is relentlessly drill yourself on syntax and basic language constructs. You should know enough HTML, CSS, Javascript, and Ruby to write code in them without having to constantly look at reference materials. I don't mean that you will never look something up (an 'expert' still uses references dozens of times a day), but that you will internalize the core set of features used in every program every day, so that you don't need to think about them while working.

For Ruby, you could try something like "Learn Ruby the Hard Way" and the Ruby koans:

For Javascript, you can try some koans there too:

(or try codecademy exercises)

For HTML and CSS... just write it a lot and read examples available online. There are probably other good resources too, but I don't know what to recommend because I haven't looked for this sort of thing in a long time.

Most importantly, yes you will eventually need to learn the development process and what it means to write "good code", but that doesn't matter at all at this point. Focus entirely on basic code literacy and the ability to build something (even something useless), and then progress to building something useful. Until you build something useful on your own, ignore everything to do with coding style, which tool is better than which, etc. Just muddle through it.

With that experience under your belt, you'll be able to participate in the discussions about what's right and proper if you want, but even then you'll probably know it when you see it. The question of "how is this going to make my work easier / better?" is always the guide there. When you see recommendations from smart people that are easy to follow, go ahead and do that, but if they seem complicated, leave it alone until you understand why it matters.

As a beginner your job is to become a builder. Once you nail that, you're good to go.

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment